Chinese New Year is a great theme! Red tableclothes, good luck symbols, fortune cookies or treats in Chinese takeout boxes. You could even construct the dancing dragon by making a dragon head out of a small box and the body out of tissue paper. We lived in Singapore several years ago and I do miss the colorful celebrations!! :cool:
We do staff/student birthday each month with cupcakes given to each student and a snack table for the staff. Any decoration ideas for this month? We are located in lower Alabama therefore have no snow in the :confused: winter. I try to have somewhat of a monthly theme on the table as a centerpiece. Please help! I need before 1/22!!!
We have a "Staff Appreciation Day" that concides somewhere in the middle of Secretaries Day and Teachers Appreciation Week. We honor all our staff not just teachers and secretaries. What we have done in the past and will also do this year is give each staff a $5-7 certificate for a local area restaurant or deli for lunch. They all love it! They REALLY appreciate this instead of all the "little nik-naks" How many mugs and pens do you need? Each year we ask some of the staff and they all seem to come back to the gift certificates. Plus they can use them when they want or go with some of their fellow staff members! It works for us!!
P. S We also include a nice poem with the certificate.
This isn't a gift idea, but we do a lunch/breakfast/snack for Teacher Appreciation once per month. It rotates and a different grade hosts the event. We have 6 grades (K-5), the PTO (in general) usually arrange something for August (not really organized yet), Christmas, and May (teacher appreciation week). So that only leaves about 8 months to cover, meaning each grade only gets hit up once, maybe twice.
What's supposed to happen is our Grade Parent rep gets the room parents together and decide if they want to do a soup and salad lunch, a dessert lotto, brunch, whatever. Then they send home notes and organize it all with parent donations and parent volunteers.
Sometimes it works like clockwork and our Teacher Appreciation Chair does little more than supervise. Other times, she's had to be much more actively involved to make sure it comes off.
But the point is, it makes for a nice monthly event, costs nothing, and the parents don't feel like they are being hit up constantly because their turn only comes once, maybe twice a year.
I always thought a nice gift would be to donate the money to a local childrens charity in your teachers' names. You could give each staff member a card that says something like "A Donation Was Made In Your Name To The Make A Wish Foundation". It's one way to stay within your budget, give your teachers a tax write off, provide happiness for a child and do something nice for the community.
